I live in Manhattan, where life ain’t cheap. Master of the obvious, right? While I love keeping quality ingredients in my apartment, sometimes I have to *gasp* buy precooked, frozen stuff to eat, because A) I don’t have time and B) it’s cheaper. Lest I be accused of some Sandra Lee “Semi-homemade” BS, let’s come out and say: whatever, yo. I can’t afford to eat sustainably, locally, trendily all of the time. It’s too hard. It’s too expensive. It takes too much damn time.

Enter Trader Joe’s precooked frozen shrimp and good ol’ Pabst Blue Ribbon. It can be used for everything: shrimp cocktail, shrimp salad, shrimp salad. In the following recipe, I decided to utilize some oven-roasted tomatoes I had on hand along with the versatile shrimp and a can of PBR to create a shrimp “beer” blanc, my cheeky take on the classic white wine-and-butter sauce, beurre blanc. With simple, readily available ingredients, it’s not much effort to prep this tasty and light Sunday dinner.

1 package of pasta (I had shell pasta on hand, but use what you prefer)

1 package Trader Joe’s precooked, frozen shrimp (thawed)

4 oven-roasted plum tomatoes (or 1 package of rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes)

2 tbsp butter

half a can of PBR (or a similar, light beer. No need to break the bank for this.)

1 tsp each: dried oregano, red chili flakes, sage, parsley

Shredded Asiago or parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Start by prepping the pasta according to package instructions.

2. While the pasta cooks, prep the beer blanc by melting the butter over medium-low heat in a sauce pan. Add the spices to the melted butter, and before the butter burns, slowly add the beer to the pan.

3. When the beer blanc stops bubbling, add the shrimp. Be careful not to overcook at this point; the shrimp is already cooked for you, so this step is merely to heat them up while they soak the sauce.

4. Drain pasta and toss with the shrimp beer blanc in the sauce pan. Add the oven-roasted tomatoes.

5. Plate the shrimp beer blanc. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top of pasta. I paired the meal with Hoegaarden, as the brightness of the beer was a great match for the light shrimp, and of course, the beer blanc sauce. Obviously, if you have more PBR on hand, you can drink that too. 😉